Susan Crawford is Wrong for Wisconsin
The April 1st election will shape the future of the state
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of The Madison Federalist.
On April 1, Wisconsinites will have the opportunity to vote for a new state Supreme Court justice, and the stakes have never been higher. The election of Janet Protasiewicz in 2023 not only shifted the political composition of the court to the left, but it also allowed Democrats to redraw Wisconsin’s electoral maps in their favor. While Republicans still maintain the majority in the State Assembly and Senate, the Democrats’ redistricted lines ousted multiple Republicans. This year, conservatives have the opportunity to take back the majority and prevent the ratification of further damaging legislative initiatives.
Susan Crawford’s commitment to impartiality and fairness is wholly platitudinal. Since her appointment to the Dane County Circuit Court in 2018, Crawford has woven her politics into her judicial decisions, often to the detriment of the Wisconsinites her position is meant to defend.
As a judge, Crawford has had an affinity for letting child predators and violent murderers off the hook for their crimes. In 2020, Curtis O’Brien was arrested for repeated sexual assault against a six-year-old girl. Crawford released O’Brien on a $500 bail and allowed him to live across the street from an elementary school, before sentencing him to only four years in prison. That same year, Kevin Welton was arrested for sexually assaulting a six-year-old and a seven-year-old at a Middleton Public Pool, a crime that came with a maximum sentence of one hundred years. After denying prosecutors' requests to increase Welton’s bail, Crawford, once again, sentenced Welton to four years. He has since been released and lives less than five minutes from an elementary school. In 2019, Crawford sentenced two criminals responsible for beating a man to death to six years in prison and has supported programs granting convicted felons early release from prison.
Following in the footsteps of her self-proclaimed mentor, Jill Karofsky, who refused to sentence criminals convicted of attacking cops to jail time, Crawford has prioritized violent criminals over the safety of Wisconsin residents.
Aside from her abysmal record as a judge, Crawford has proven her hypocrisy when it comes to judicial ethics. Just one day after criticizing her opponent, Brad Schimel, for being too partisan, Crawford, along with Democratic Party State Chairman Ben Winkler, joined a “donor advisory briefing”, where they discussed how her election to the Supreme Court would put two more Congressional seats in play in 2026. Also at the meeting was Reid Hoffman, a California billionaire who has given millions to Democrats over the years, and members of Focus for Democracy, a liberal group that divests donor funds to voter turnout programs. Crawford and the Democrat Party of Wisconsin aren’t even attempting to obfuscate their attack on the Wisconsin Constitution and our electoral maps. To Crawford and her liberal friends, “democracy” is weaponizing our judicial system to gerrymander the state in favor of the Democrats. This is not even to mention the disastrous economic consequences that would come from overturning Act 10.
It’s hard to tell if the decisions made by Judge Crawford are a consequence of her incompetence or her questionable ethics; either way, her record speaks for itself – she is dangerous for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and dangerous for the state.
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